


Meet Tatiana and Holly

by ModernDayBard



Series: Holly and Tatiana Rose, American Girls [1]
Category: American Girl Dolls - All Media Types
Genre: Modern Characters - Freeform, Original Characters - Freeform, Original Story - Freeform, modern story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29735358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernDayBard/pseuds/ModernDayBard
Summary: The Rose twins, Tatiana and Holly love their life in California with their college professor dad. But when he has to teach at a different school all the way in Virginia, they have to face the reality of uprooting and starting over, all the while wondering if there’s anything that can stay the same forever.
Series: Holly and Tatiana Rose, American Girls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185455





	1. Where to Begin

_Tatiana:_

One last day.

Tomorrow, everything in Tatiana Rose’s life would change (and _not_ for the better, she’d be quick to say). Tomorrow, the life she knew and live would be disappearing into the distance at the speed of a plane—

Tomorrow, Tatiana, Dad, and her twin, Holly would leave California and move to Virginia, and Tatiana was _not_ happy about it.

She _liked_ living here! She _liked_ going over to her aunt’s house for school and she _loved_ learning to sew clothes and craft props with Aunt Mary after she finished her school work, and she _loved_ gong to craft shows and costume events like Ren Faire and conventions with Aunt Mary and Billy, her older cousin. But her dad’s university had let a bunch of its professor’s go, and it was a school all the way in Virginia that’d hired him, so they were moving.

Tomorrow.

Dad and Aunt Mary had tried to make their last day together fun, but going to all of their favorite places just made her remember that she’d _never_ see them again. (Sometimes, Tatiana wished she was Aunt Mary’s daughter instead of her niece, so that she could stay here and help her make and sell crafts and clothes and costumes, rather than move away and go to a new school in a new town with new people.)

Billy, who was 14 but never seemed to mind his little cousins, hung back behind the others until he was trailing beside Tatiana. “Hey, Pixie, you holding up okay?”

Not even the nickname could make her smile. “No. I feel sick. I can’t go if I’m sick, right?” Last year, they’d been planning on flying to Alaska for a vacation, but Holly had woken up with the flu, and they’d had to cancel.

Billy squeezed her shoulder and shook his head. “Sorry, that’s just the nerves. But you’ll be fine: just think of it like a quest.”

“Quests are supposed to be _fun_ and _cool_ and then you come back _home_ ,” Tatiana pouted, but she hated that she was being so mean when Billy was just trying to help (and when it was their last day living in the same town…)

But Billy only smiled. “Sometimes. Other times, you go on a quest to find a new place to start over. To build something new. Something you never could’ve imagined having or finding if you’d never left.”

She knew he was right, but Tatiana still didn’t like it. She’d rather go on a hundred pretend quests than _actually_ leave home…

One last day.

* * *

_Holly:_

It was still dark when Dada and Aunt Mary woke the twins up the next morning, and Holly was so sleepy that she couldn’t even try to read her book at breakfast, like she usually did. (Most of her books had already been packed up and sent to Virginia with the rest of their stuff ahead of them, but she’d kept her favorite, _Calling on Dragons_ , to read on the plane.)

Holly looked over and saw that Tatiana was barely poking at the toast on her plate—Tatiana had made _no_ secret of the fact that she didn’t want to move. Holly wasn’t too happy, either: all of her friends were here, especially her book club, and the library (and the library cat), but they _were_ moving, and there wasn’t anything that the twins could _do_ about it. (sometimes, it seemed that there wasn’t anything even _Dad_ could do about it—he had to go to the school that would pay him to teach, after all.)

Mary drove them to the airport, and even Billy came with them, though he was pretty much still asleep for most of the time. They came in with the at first, but then they were at the security gate—Aunt Mary was hugging them—Billy was hugging them—Aunt Mary and Billy were _leaving_ —Tatiana was crying—Dad was hugging her—it was all going _so fast—_

While they were sitting, waiting to board the plane, Holly felt Dad’s hand on her shoulder and looked up to seem him looking at her closely. “How are you doing? You’ve been very quiet—are you doing okay?”

Was she? Holly didn’t know the answer to that, really, so she guessed that meant it couldn’t be _too_ bad—right? “Just tired,” she said at last, because that much _was_ true, at least.

Dad smiled, and that made Holly feel a little bit better. “Well, hopefully you can get some more sleep on the plane. Which should help adjust your sleep schedule with the different time zones.”

“Can we get ‘Second Breakfast’ once we’re there, then?”

Dad grinned at her—he’d just finished reading _The Hobbit_ to the twins, and promised to start in on _The Lord of the Rings_ trilogy once they got moved in. “Sounds like a plan, Holly.”

\----

She didn’t actually sleep on the plane, but that was okay—that was why she had brought her book, after all.

Holly opened to her new bookmark—the one that the girls in her book club had given her along with a journal: their ‘goodbye’ present. They’d all signed their names on the bookmark in different colored pens and markers, then laminated it.

They’d had so much fun together…Nikki and her horse books…Leah and her stories with talking animals…Tessa and her mystery books…Jamie’s adventure stories…they all loved different kinds of stories, and loved sharing them with each other and discovering all kinds of different books that way…

It was several minutes before Holly realized that she was still staring at the same page and hadn’t read a single word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I decided to base these stories on some of my own defining experiences of being 8-10 years old, I knew I had to deal with the first time (I remembered) moving, which happened to be cross-country and quite jarring for little me. It also happened to be what got me into American Girl, as someone gave me Meet Kirsten right before we moved, and I related to her books so much during that time. Different reasons from the Rose family’s, but the emotions both girls are going through are quite familiar all the same…


	2. First Day

_Holly:_

They’d been flying for hours, but when they landed, it was _still_ morning in Virginia—time zones were funny things. As promised, Dad took them out for ‘Second Breakfast’ (which felt more like lunch). Even Tatiana was too hungry to let her bad mood stop her from ordering her favorite pancakes.

Dad finished first—he usually did—and watched the twins as he sipped his coffee. Holly saw the worried look on his face when Tatiana didn’t look up as she ate. When Dad turned to her, Holly made sure to meet his eyes ad smile. “What about elevensies? Lunch? Tea? Dinner? Supper?” She wasn’t sure if the lines were in the book, but she knew they made Dad laugh—or at least, smile.

“Wouldn’t count on it, Pip,” he finished with a wink.

Tatiana still frowned at her plate, but at least Dad seemed to be feeling better.

\-----

After they ate, Dad took them to meet Professor Whitten—a friend of his who’d convinced the English department he worked at to hire Dad, helped them find a house, and now was going to help drive the boxes of their stuff from storage to the new house.

A couple of the boxes were too big for the twins to carry—even together—but there enough small boxes and other things that they could still help.

“I still can’t believe how little you brought, George. I know it’s just you and the girls, but still…”

Dad shook his head. “Our old place was pretty small. And it worked out to be cheaper to get a lot of our furniture second-hand once we got here than to ship what we had.

Professor Whiten chuckled at that. “More space in the truck for your books, too—eh?”

Holly didn’t see what was so funny—she didn’t care much about which bed she had, but she’d _never_ leave her books behind!

* * *

_Tatiana:_

Compared to their old house, the new one was pretty big. Well, okay, they’d lived in a _very_ small house in California, but it had been just right for them! Most of the floor here wasn’t carpeted, and with no furniture in it yet, the sound kept bouncing off all the blank walls—Tatiana could swear there was an echo!

She wanted to hate it, she kept making herself think of deserted tombs and empty castles—and all the ways that their old house had been _home_ (that this wasn’t). But they did have a backyard now…and one of the bedrooms had a window seat…there was a back porch the reminded her of a stage…

Okay, so not _everything_ about the new house was awful, but she still didn’t have to like it!

As she helped to carry in the boxes that she could, Tatiana remembered the weekend that they’d spent packing up their old life, carefully labeling each box so that they’d know which ones to unpack first. (She’d lingered over her art and sewing supplies, all collected with Aunt Mary’s help over the years—packing them up had felt like a horrible ending. What would unpacking them now do, she wondered.)

“You girls will have to decide who gets what room,” Dad called, breaking into her thoughts. “One’s got the window seat, and the other has the alcove nook.”

Tatiana hadn’t thought about that—but she and Holly wouldn’t have to share a room anymore. Back in California, Tatiana would’ve been so happy about having all the extra space, but now, with so much changing…

“Tatiana, you can have the window seat,” Holly offered at last. “I know you like it. And I can make the alcove into a reading nook!”

That was Holly: as long as she had her silly books, she was happy. Didn’t she _care_ that all their friends and half their family were all the way on the other side of the _country_? “Fine. Sure.”

Holly gave her a long look before speaking again. “It’ll be good lighting for your sewing—right? Or you could pretend to be a princess in a castle tower.”

…She wasn’t _wrong_ , but that just made Tatiana feel _worse_ —all mixed-up and confused inside. She took her box of sewing supplies onto the room with the window seat and placed them on its cushion. She clambered up next to the box and pressed her nose to the glass until her glasses ‘clinked’ against the window.

The porch and the backyard spread out before her, and she could already picture the sorts of games she could play out there, the adventures she could create…

_“…Other times, you go on a quest to find a new place to start over…”_

She didn’t _want_ to start over! …But…if she _had_ to…she supposed there could be _worse_ places to do it in…

But were the heroes that went on all those epic quests that Billy, Holly, and Dad liked to read about (and she and Aunt Mary and Billy liked to play out) supposed to feel this lonely and homesick?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the logistics of this move make no sense to me, either. my problem was that I had three different versions of how their move went in my head, and I think elements of each of them ended up in the final version. Oops.
> 
> (In my defense, for military moves, they pack up and ship your stuff without you, so it was once I started writing this chapter that I realized the Rose family probably couldn’t do it exactly like that? Only they kinda ended up sort of, in the story? So, I try not to dwell on it. Oops. This is what a longer planning time probably could’ve helped me fix. My bad.)


	3. Bedtime Stories

_Tatiana:_

Carrying in all the boxes took _so long_ —they had barely begun opening them, and the sun was already starting to go down!

Dad frowned, rubbing the bac of his neck. “I may have done this wrong…the kitchen’s not unpacked, we haven’t gone grocery shopping, and we don’t even have _beds_ …I’m sorry, girls. Guess I was a bit ambitious thinking that we could everything set up today. Tell you what: let’s unpack our sleeping bags and our clothes, then we’ll run out and grab something to eat, have a little camp out in the living room, then start fresh tomorrow—how does that sound? Or would you each like to sleep in your own rooms in your sleeping bags?”

The thought of sleeping in that empty room by _herself_ with nothing but boxes around her and every sound and shadow strange—

“Let’s camp in the living room.”

Tatiana and Holly stopped for a second, staring at each other. From time to time, they would do stuff like that: say the same thing at the same time.

“Aunt Mary, we did it again,” both whispered at the same time, to finish the joke. Normally, they said it louder (normally, Aunt Mary was around to hear them).

Dad came up between them and put a hand on each shoulder, pulling them in for a three-person sideways hug. “Camp out it is,” he said. Then, so quietly Tatiana almost missed it: “I miss her, too.”

Tatiana thought about the move from Dad’s perspective: losing a job he’d had for years that he really loved, and the only place he could find to work was across the country, and he had to leave his home, his _sister_ , his nephew…

Tatiana leaned more into the hug, blinking back another flood of tears before offering, “Can we tell campfire stories tonight?”

Dad’s hand tightened on her shoulder and he grinned down at her. “Absolutely we can.”

It could’ve been her imagination, but it almost looked like he was trying not to cry, too.

\------

Tatiana pulled her favorite pajamas off the top of the box labeled ‘Tatiana—Clothes: Dresser’ and turned to see Holly in the doorway, PJ’s in hand, staring at her a little.

“What?” she asked, and Holly shrugged.

“I dunno…Guess it’ll be nice to share a room for a few more nights.

Tatiana thought about Holly speaking up at the same time she did, also not wanting to be alone tonight. “Yeah, it will. Think Dad will start reading to us like he promised?”

She saw the gleam in her sister’s eyes: they’d both enjoyed _The Hobbit_ , but Tatiana knew that Holly was the one most excited about starting _The Fellowship of the Ring_. (Personally, Tatiana couldn’t wait until Dad said they were old enough to watch the movies—Aunt Mary and Billy had told her so many stories about how they’d made the costumes and props for the films.)

“Let’s go ask him now so he has time to unpack the book!”

* * *

_Holly:_

Since Holly had gotten to pick where they went for ‘Second Breakfast’ (and Professor Whitten had brought sandwiches for a sort of ‘picnic lunch’ before he left), Dad said Tatiana could pick what they did for dinner.

She chose pizza, so in the end, Dad decided to order in to make it more like a ‘real camp out’ (though they did have to go through a couple of boxes to find some plates—fortunately, they realized that _before_ the pizza got there, so dinner didn’t go cold, at least!)

It was kind of fun to sit around the living room, sitting on the floor eating pizza and joking with each other like they really were outside: ‘The stars sure are bright tonight!’ ‘There’s the big dipper!’ and ‘Did you hear that wolf howl?’

Finally, like they asked, Dad pulled out his copy of _Fellowship of the Ring_. Holly and Tatiana clambered into their sleeping bags and then turned to Dad, ready.

He opened to the first page, stared at it for a moment, then looked up at the twins. “Now, this is going to be very different from _The Hobbit_. They’re both good, but they’re different. Give it at least a few chapters—a few nights—before you make up your minds, okay?”

It seemed to Holly that they’d been hearing that a lot, lately…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know Holly’s section was a lot shorter this time, but since Tatiana’s mindset is the one shifting the most in this chapter, more of the chapter went to her. (My ideas for this whole book probably changed the most out of the three as I was writing it. But in this case, that also meant realizing the parallels between going from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings and moving from one place to another, so I decided to go with it.)


	4. New Neighbors

_Holly:_

Because they hadn’t fully adjusted to the new time zone yet, the Rose family was up pretty early the next morning. Dad did a quick donut run (and also got some coffee for himself), then they started sorting the boxes into those that they would need to open first, those that could wait (and those that they would need some furniture for first, like their blankets and bedsheets). Then they started in the kitchen, and with all three of them working together, unpacking those boxes didn’t take long at all.

Before they could move to the next set of boxes, there was a knock at the door. Dad opened it, and standing just outside were two girls about the twins’ age: a red-haired girl and a girl with dark tan skin and light brown hair.

“Hi!” the second girl chirped. “I’m Alex, and this is Maddie. Welcome to the neighborhood! We saw there were kids our age. Can they come outside and play?”

Dad glanced back at where Holly and Tatiana were standing in the hall behind him. Holly shifted from foot to foot. She _did_ want to make friends, but meeting new people was always kind of scary—what if they thought she was weird?

“We won’t leave the block,” Maddie chimed in. “My house is two down from here, and Alex’s is just across the street. We can play in the front yards, so you can see.”

Dad nodded and smiled. “Of course. Thank you for coming over to introduce yourselves: it’s always easier settling in when you have a couple friends. You girls go ahead. I’ll do a little more unpacking, then run out to the store for some groceries and odds and ends—okay? You have fun.”

The two girls outside beamed, then waved for Holly and Tatiana to join them. Once all four were standing in the front yard, there was a quiet moment where they all just kinda looked at each other. Alex was the first to speak.

“Are you guys twins? You look the same age.” Then, when they nodded: “That’s so cool! I have a brother, but he’s four years older than me. Maddie’s an only child. Do you guys have any pets?”

“No,” Holly answered sadly. “But the library I used to go to had a cat that really liked me…”

Alex’s mouth dropped open and she bounced in place a little. Holly was beginning to get the sense the Alex didn’t sit—or stand—still a lot. “That’s awesome! I have a cat named Ginger and Maddie’s got a big old dog named Licorice. I bet they’ll love you, too!”

Holly felt Tatiana stiffen beside her and reached out to hold her hand—Tatiana was scared of dogs, especially big ones. But if Alex noticed, she didn’t say anything. “Come on! The tree in Maddie’s yard is _great_ for climbing: you’ll love it!”

* * *

_Tatiana:_

They didn’t actually end up the climbing the bush/tree that Maddie and Alex showed them (it was as tall as a tree but shaped like a bush with branches starting very low to the ground) because the skirt of Tatiana’s dress kinda got in the way, and she hadn’t yet unpacked most of her other clothes. (Besides, she wore a _lot_ of dresses because she liked wearing them and loved making them with Aunt Mary.)

“You _made_ this?” Maddie asked as she sat next to Tatiana in the shade (Climbing or not, the bush/tree made for a great little ‘clubhouse’ area) and looked at the purple dress with golden dragonflies on it—one of Tatiana’s favorites.

“Yep! Me and Aunt Mary,” Tatiana responded proudly. “She makes and sells clothes and costumes, and I help her out while she teaches me! You should see the gowns she made for us for Ren Faire: they’re _beautiful_.”

Alex tilted her head to one side. “What’s Ren Faire?”

Tatiana felt her heart sink a little: hadn’t Dad told her there were Ren Faires in Virginia—and in Maryland? As she told Alex and Maddie all about Ren Faire, and gong there with Aunt Mary and Billy, she was trying pretty hard not to cry. Why did _every_ thing have to be so different?

“That sounds kinda fun. Maybe there’s one around here somewhere that we can go to,” Maddie offered with a smile. “My Dad’s in the Air Force, so we have to move around a lot, too. So, I know what it’s like to have to start over. But some things don’t change—maybe this is one of them. Do you guys ever do any theatre?”

“We haven’t,” Holly answered, “but sometimes Dad would take us to the shows as the college he used to teach at. He even recorded a radio voice for one of them.”

Holly and Maddie started talking about different shows and dance recitals—even Alex chimed in, since she did ice skating and gymnastics—but Tatiana was quiet.

She _had_ always wanted to be in a play or musical—it seemed so similar to what she did already—and it was _so good_ to have friends already, but she still felt homesick. Give it time, people said. A few chapters, like the book last night, Dad had said.

But what was she supposed to do in the mean time?


	5. Next Steps

_Tatiana:_

Alex and Maddie were really nice, and they kept coming over—sometimes to play, but they even helped with the unpacking sometimes—then, in the evenings, the twins and Dad would make dinner, and Dad would read them another chapter before bed.

It…wasn’t so bad, actually.

Their rooms were coming together: Tatiana’s mostly fantasy and princess-y, but the corner around the window seat was her own crafting area, with everything sorted and stored and ready to be turned into something pretty; Holly’s was a little simpler with a lot of blues and browns, mostly, and a whole nook for her big bookshelf and a beanbag chair. Neither one was much like the room they’d shared in California, but…

…But that was okay.

It was like Billy had said: sometimes, at the end of a quest, you’d start over. But that meant that starting over was kind of its own quest, too—the kind that you didn’t know you’d finished until you looked around one day and realized that you were home, at last.

Tatiana _wasn’t_ there yet—not by a long shot, she knew. But, just like Frodo in the story Dad was reading, there was no way she could go back to where she’d been, she’d just have to keep moving forward and hope that the journey would turn out alright in the end.

And, she thought as she and Holly sat together on the new couch, listening as Dad described the forest outside of the Shire, just like Frodo, she wouldn’t be going on her quest alone.

* * *

_Holly:_

Holly knew that the changes were just beginning—at least this year, Dad’s teaching schedule meant that he wouldn’t have time to homeschool the twins, so they’d be going to school for the first time…the fact that Alex and Maddie went to the same school didn’t really make Holly feel any less nervous: it was just the one bright spot in a sea of ‘I don’t know about this’.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—it wasn’t like either of the twins were _bad_ students. They got their work done, and did pretty good in most subjects. It was the other kids that had Holly worried—her book club had been really good friends by the end, but there were other kids she’d known that she hadn’t really known how to talk to, and not knowing which kind the kids at school were going to be was definitely making her nervous.

(When she was told about the twins being homeschooled before, Alex had asked how they’d made friends, but there’d always been enough groups and clubs to find kids their age with similar interests—and Maddie had chimed in saying it’d been the same for her when she was homeschooled before moving here last year. Apparently, she’d been to every kind of school in the last few years: Public, Private, and homeschooled, too.)

But there wasn’t anything that could be done—Dad was the newest professor, so he had the least say in his schedule, and who knew if his new college would have even let the twins do their schoolwork in his office, even if he _had_ the time.

And, as there was nothing to be done, there was no point in making a fuss—was there? Dad and Tatiana had their own problems they were dealing with, so Holly would deal with hers, too.

No turning back, no skirting around—only pressing onward, upward, and through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I had an idea for this last chapter I ended up scrapping at the last minute, so it turned into more of a ‘looking forward’ type chapter, as well as touching base with the twins’ headspace. And yes, it was intentional that Holly started out the book seemingly the positive one and ended up in the harder headspace and Tatiana going the opposite, based on their approach to their own emotions about the move. And they’ll go back and forth and up and down—that’s how life is, especially when adapting to a big change, after all.


End file.
